ABSTRACT
The rules, principles, ideals, sentiments, laws, and agreements that play a central role in nonfeminist ethics also figure strongly in nonfeminist bioethics. This chapter examines inductivism and principlism as mediation between deductivism and inductivism. Critics of deductivism claim that what actually grounds most deductivist moral theories are basic intuitions or unproved assumptions shared by a relatively homogeneous group of people. Aware of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of both inductivism and deductivism, so-called principlists urge to move between particular judgments on the one hand and general norms on the other. Principlists insist that their approach to ethics does provide adequate action-guides. The chapter considers two nonfeminist approaches to bioethics, both of which seem to depart from the dominant nonfeminist approaches. Turning to history for inspiration, the thinkers who are developing nonfeminist bioethics of care have found that the ideal of care has had two main meanings in the context of health care.
